


Time Slip Quicksilver

by ImperiusRex



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Child Abuse, Erik is a Bad Dad, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Imprisonment, Psychological Torture, Sad Ending, Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, timeslip universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-15 16:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21256340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperiusRex/pseuds/ImperiusRex
Summary: In the Time Slip Universe, Pietro Maximoff is not the fasted man alive. Instead his mutant has turned him into a being made of mercury and he later becomes a foot solider for his father's plan to have mutants reign supreme. How did he came to work for Magneto? What happened to young boy who once led a happy life with his twin sister? Magneto is not the savior that Pietro thinks he is but who can tell a man who lost everything that he was nothing more than his father's puppet.





	Time Slip Quicksilver

His jar rattles softly as the van moves, it was held in place by a small rope that secured it so that it didn’t smash to the floor of the vehicle as they rattled down another country road heading for who knows where now, he had lost track years ago.

Days are always slipping by now, slowly to one such as him. He had no real purpose to life, he moves in a constant circle, his body a pool of silvery substance and liquid that splashed against the large glass jar he was contained in. His mutation a curse, for he could stay in that form for an eternity and still be alive without food or water.

Time slips by again the darkness inside the vehicle turns to light, he hadn’t noticed that they had stopped, and he settles in his jar waiting. The man who handles him heaves into the van and grunts as he lifts the small jar, it weighed too much for its size. “Heavy bastard” he mutters as he takes him out into the sunshine and this is the moment that Pietro has been waiting for, he presses against the glass, he has no form in this cramped cage, but his blurred vision can see the light as it filters into his jar and he can almost feel the warmth, and for one bright moment he can remember, _sunshine_, **warmth**, his youth spent running with bare feet as his sister chased him, and his parents laughed together as they watched.

_“Pietro, you are slipping out of my grip!”_

_“You have to be faster to catch me Wanda!”_

The man carrying Pietro enters the tent and the sunlight fades with the memories of his childhood into the dark again. He is set on a large wooden table and his handler leaves. None of them talk to him anymore, he scares them, and he doesn’t blame them he scares himself. He settles again a still pool of silvery liquid mercury and he tries to bring back that fleeting memory of his childhood moment in the sun, instead he finds a different kind of light, fire.

_It was that night again, that horrible night, where the fire seemed like a living thing and it ate his family alive as Wanda screamed, her eyes glowing with a bright scarlet light, Pietro reaching for her desperate to hold onto his sister to pull her away, to run far and fast but his hands were too soft they dripped silver as his body changed, his mutation he would later learned was triggered by the onset of his puberty and the highs stress he was under, as was Wanda’s mutation but unlike Pietro she didn’t change physically in the same way. She became pure light, a shining bright scarlet light that hurt his eyes and when he went to cover them he saw that his own skin shone silver and he melted into a puddle of metal. He didn’t know how to control his new form and so he could do nothing as he watched Wanda dissolve away, until she was nothing. Their home burned down around him, his mother and father’s bodies like charred where they fell, and Wanda was simply gone. He stayed, where could he go? Later someone would find him and stuff him into a jar and he would be looked at, shaken, and shut away in the dark unless he entertained the customers with his movements. His sorry existence a hell and he so often wished he had died that night._

He waits, knowing that soon people would start tapping on his glass to make him move and if he didn’t then it would be shaken by his handler and if he still didn’t move then his owner would threaten to lock him away in the dark, he did that the first year and Pietro nearly went mad. Unable to control his power he was helpless as he saw nothing but black, left alone for what had felt like forever. It had been a long time now since that horrid year but still he feared it, and it was enough to get him to make a few voluntary movements, the shifting liquid moving in the jar pleased people for they did not know he was once human and thought him some kind of trick. He wished he could control it, could go back to his own body.

He waits. It’s been too long its past time the show should have started. Finally there is someone walking towards him. It is not the shadow of his handler, or any of the others who worked in the traveling circus. Rather it was a man he had never seen before, he was large and his face was covered by a helmet. Pietro shrank back afraid, he did not know what this was but he knew that anything different, anything new, usually meant some kind of pain for him.

Instead he finds salvation.

The lid of his jar was popped open by the man somehow, he didn’t use his hands but still it opened. Pietro could feel some kind of magnetic charge and it called to him. Then the man had grabbed his jar and began to pour him out, he silently cried out and tried to cling to the inside of his glass. Pietro was afraid to go out into the world. He had been trapped so long that he does not know how to feel about this. Still he not permitted to stay in safe glass as the magnetic force once again calls to him and this time it yanks him out of his jar. He trembles in a puddle on the dirt floor. He is being pulled again, this time upwards, the force compels him to take shape, it forces him to stretch up and up and up until he had to remember that he once had legs. He creates them, he remembers he had arms and there they were, his face is so distant in his memory but it formed as well. Pietro stood as a man for the first time in years, but still he was no longer just a man, the mutant looked like something out of a sci-fi story, his skin was shining silver mercury, his face all hard angles and sharp. He glances at the man who was responsible for his freedom.

“I am Magneto. I have spent years searching for you Pietro.”

_How- how did you find me, who are you_, but Pietro cannot speak, he forgot, but he remembers letters, he tries to talk but it’s a garbled mess. The man, Magneto, does not seem to mind.

“It will take you time to control yourself, for now I am keeping a hold on your form so that you do not lose your form, can you feel my magnetic manipulations?”

He could, it thrummed through his entire body like a guitar string being plucked, Pietro felt every small command that Magneto wished of him. He nods.

Magneto steps closer and Pietro can finally see the face inside the helmet. Magneto was old, he had white eyebrows the same shade as Pietro’s hair before his mutation; the same blue eyes as Pietro too. He feels his heart hammer. Magneto brings up one hand and the backs of his fingers brush over one side of Pietro’s face, caressing his cheek. Pietro forget that it felt like to have another person touch him; he feels tears form in his eyes; they slip down slowly over silver cheeks, little drops of mercury tears, perfectly formed.

“You are perfect, just as nature intended.” Magneto whispers, and then speaks words that nearly makes Pietro come to his knees, “My son.”

He wants to ask how but he cannot. Magneto sees this and wipes away one tear. “No doubt you have questions. I will answer them, and tell you of your mother, but first we must leave this place. We still have to find your sister; you will help me… won’t you?”

**_She is the light_**, he wants to say, **_She is the bright scarlet light and I could not catch her as she slipped between my fingers._** Instead he nods harder now, he would follow this man wherever he goes. As the pair of mutants leave the tent they step over the bodies of the owner and the handler, and Pietro feels nothing for them. He knows that his father killed for him. He turns his face up to the sunlight and his silver lips smile widely.

*****

It does not take long, Magneto tells Pietro of everything. His marriage, Pietro’s mother, how Pietro and Wanda were adopted.

Time slips by quickly now, as the days move on and they continue their search. Of course in between searching for his sister Pietro helps Magneto from time to time, he first learned how to gain control of himself then he went on missions for his father. It was not hard, slip into this building, kill this man, steal this, hurt that, kill more humans. Pietro does not question why, he is grateful to Magneto, and his father would help him find his sister just as he found him. So the years pass by in the blink of eye.

One day he awoke from what felt like a long sleep. He had just finished killing another man, an important human diplomat. _How does this help me find Wanda?_ He wonders as the diplomat drowned in mercury. It didn’t, he returns to his father, once again he gets praised for his efforts to help mutant kind, and Pietro likes that. He likes being told he is worthy, being praised and thanked for his actions. He loves his father so much.

“Father, I want to leave…. to find Wanda. You are too busy with mutant affairs these days and we still are no closer than we were a few years ago. I will bring her back.”

“Soon, we still have work to do.” Magneto does not look at him he continues to work on his latest weapon.

Magneto’s reply is not what Pietro wanted, so he rebelled against the decision and he was punished. Of course Pietro had felt pain before but never like this, his entire body is at the command of his father. He is stretched and pulled apart in his mercurial form, then shoved back together. He can’t even scream out loud but his mind does enough screaming for him. He does not understand why his father would do this, _he loves me, he loves me, he must love me, then why he is hurting me?_ When the blinding pain is over he lays shaking on the ground curled up in a ball at Magneto’s feet.

“My son, _oh my son_.” He had heard the few gasps of Pietro’s words as he tortured his son. “Don’t you know that I did this because I love you? If I let you leave me, that pain you just felt will be nothing compared to what the humans would do to you. Wherever Wanda is we will find her but you must trust me. Was I not the one who gave you everything? Your freedom, your happiness. You were perfect my son, but now you’re a disappointment”

Magneto’s words resonant in Pietro’s head like a drum and he realizes he was fool to ever disobey his father. _I was wrong._ The thought lodged firmly in his mind now, and Pietro is suddenly desperate for things to go back to the way they were, back to when his father approved of him. He uncurls himself and claws his way towards Magneto, crawling on his belly until he reaches the Master of Magnetisms boots. Raising his head he softly presses his silver lips against the leather, one kiss on each foot, and whispers in a rough voice. “Forgive me father. Forgive me.”

Silence before a loud breath is realized, “Oh Pietro my boy, of course I could not forsake you, my only son. But love must be earned do you understand? Now no more of this.”

Quicksilver nods his head and silently cries silver tears.

*****

More years go past and he does not disobey. He who once lost himself in a pool of mercury and hid in a jar had tried to rise and was ground down so hard under thick boots that once again he hid, but now he hides in his perfect form. His body now is Pietro’s refuge and his mind only on the thought of pleasing his father.

Sometimes he recalls another person, one whom he was born with, who had curly hair and bright eyes that shone like the light, but she was in the past and even now as Pietro went on his way to do yet another one of his father’s biddings he still felt that once… there was another bond that held him fast.

But the strings he wears now belonged to only one puppet master, and had Pietro been of sound mind he would have the way that Magneto despised him, how hollow his words were, how empty his promises. Quicksilver did not see because he did not wish to see, he heard the praises, he saw the strong emotions in his father’s face and he thought; _He loves me. This is why he holds me close. He cannot bear to lose me._

And so Pietro became Magneto’s perfect silver puppet.

** _Pietro was a puppet under his true father’s control. A father who loved Pietro, as he believed, too much to allow him his freedom. – Vince Giarrano, Time Slip Quicksilver_ **

**Author's Note:**

> I was asked for a Quicksilver angst fic and here it is! Heavily based on TimeSlip Quicksilver and the quote at the end of the fic is from the comic.
> 
> Comments and Kudos are always appreciated!


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